This collection of excerpts from some of the best, wittiest, and most unusual 16th- and 17th-century writing brings to life the variety, the energy, and the harsh realities of England in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. Taken from books, plays, poems, letters, diaries, and pamphlets, here are William Harrison and Fynes Moryson on descriptions of England, Nicholas Breton on country life, Isabella Whitney and Thomas Dekker on life in London, Thomas Nashe on the struggles of women writers, John Donne's meditations on prayer and death, and King James I writing of tobacco, as well as commentary from Shakespeare's own work.